Critical Theory – II

Paper Code: 
ENG 421
Credits: 
04
Periods/week: 
04
Objective: 

Objective: To introduce the students with literary criticism and theories and also to familiarize them to the methods of textual application of a theory.

Unit I: 
Unit I

The New Criticism     

 (pp. 166 – 176 from Patricia Waugh)

Unit II: 
Unit II

Poststructuralism: Roland Barthes      

 (pp. 72-76 from M.A.R. Habib)

Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida         

Extract from “Derrida, Deconstruction and  Literary Interpretation”               

(from lib. kshs.kh.edu.tw/lib/journals/journals-94/P145.pdf)

 

Unit III: 
Unit III

Western Feminism:  Feminisms         

 (pp.82-90, 94-108 from Pramod K. Nayar)

 

Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own  

(pp.100-102 from Rice and Waugh) 

 

Indian Feminism: A People Without  a History? 

(pp. 1-10 & 23 from Jasbir Jain)

 

Unit IV: 
Unit IV

Psychoanalytic Criticism (pp. 63-73)*

Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (Section V: “The Material and Sources of Dreams”  pp. 201-204)

 

Unit V: 
Unit V

Postcolonial Theory (pp.153-172 & 175-178)*

Edward W. Said’s Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Section II from “Introduction”  pp. 4-9)  

 

Source Books: 

Habib, M.A.R. Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History. Malden, MA.: Wiley Blackwell Pub., 2008. Print.

Jain, Jasbir. Indigenous Roots of Feminism: Culture, Subjectivity and Agency. New Delhi: Sage Pub., 2011. Print.

Nayar, Pramod K. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From Structuralism to Ecocriticism. New Delhi:  Pearson, 2010.Print.

Waugh, Patricia.  Literary Theory and Criticism. Oxford: OUP, 2006. Print.

 

SUGGESTED READINGS: 

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Empire Writes Back. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Childs, Peter. Modernism: A New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Das, Bijoy Kumar. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2004. Print.

Nagarajan, M.S. English Literary Criticism and Theory: An Introductory History. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006. Print.

Rice, Philip, and Patricia Waugh, eds. Modern Literary Theory. London: Hodder Education, 1993. Print.

Selden, Raman and Peter Widdowson. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. London: Longman, 1963. Print.

Seturaman, V.S, ed. Contemporary Criticism. New York: Macmillan, 1989.  Print.

 

 

 

 

 

Academic Year: 
2018-2019